Next to lists, dictionaries are one of the most useful data types in Python. Python lists, as previously shown, are ordered collections that use a numerical offset. To select an item in a list, you need to know its position within the list. Python dictionaries are unordered collections of objects, matched to a key name; in other words, you can reference an item simply by knowing its associated key.
Because of their construction, dictionaries can replace many typical search algorithms and data structures found in C and related languages. For those coming from other languages, Python dictionaries are just like a hash table or associative array, where an object is mapped to a key name.
Dictionaries include the following properties:
- They are accessed by a key, not an offset. Each item in the dictionary has a corresponding key; the key is used to call the item.
- Stored...